This made me angry

I was reading the developer interview round up and read this paragraph

"With respect to itemization improvements, the team understands that one of main problems with existing legendaries is that they're often relegated to "toy status" because, while the've got fun effects, they rarely offer comparable upgrades to efficiency-based stats like DPS and EHP. The goal is to make sure that future legendaries don't just look cool, but that they're also compelling to use and make your character feel powerful, both visually and mechanically"

Like, seriously? This is a f***ing revelation to these people? It makes me want to go and slap all the developers in the face. This is the most obvious thing in any game that has items. No one is going to enjoy some fun unique ability or quirk in an item if of course the item has bad DPS, this is a prerequisite to a legendary item. Its oxygen and water, cant live without it.

How are these developers seriously just figuring this out now? Complete amature stuff right here, as if they never made a game before. Its one of those things where I just have no words, I cant...

From what I understood, they changed some mechanics before they shipped the game and some things, like legendaries remained, well, as they were... They made some "fast" improvements at the first itemisation, but now it's more clear what the game is missing and they try to make a large step in the direction of a "flawless" game. Of course that may never be, and even though they should have had a final game by now and making people wait so long practically doing nothing is annoying, I am certain I will enjoy the changes and will farm like crazy, then.
I would also like a solution for the great idea that was RMAH. Bots and third party sites ruined the economy. I really liked making money from this game, that was a good reason to keep playing the game.

If they say something in an interview it doesn't mean that's something they just discovered two weeks ago.

Of course they always knew that such items had to be balanced, but exactly this part ("balance") is the difficult part and especially after the quick 1.04 legendary fix it got out of hand.

If they say in an interview "we want players to have fun when killing monsters", do you also think they just came up with this "revelation" yesterday?

I don't think you got OP's point.
They MADE all these 'toy legendaries', and now they say "people don't use 'toy legendaries' because they suck".
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Maybe you should've figured that out before you made them.

I don't think you got OP's point.
They MADE all these 'toy legendaries', and now they say "people don't use 'toy legendaries' because they suck".
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Maybe you should've figured that out before you made them.

What they probably didn't know that in a game where it's supposed to be about having fun slaying monsters that so many people would care that much about efficiency in the first place.

I have personally used weapons like Vigilance (with Deadly Reach) and Schaeffer's Hammer with decent success in mid MPs (and for pathetic amounts of gold, like 50k). They are less gimmicky than people make them out to be. My actual dps with my Schaeffer's hammer was almost twice my sheet dps (and 2.5 times my dps with WW). Stuff like movespeed on a ring or amulet are quite unique, and technically open up choices on other slots that could use better EHP (no need for Tyraels, Inna's, Lacunis), but again people are too worried about losing some of their precious dps if these can't roll quadfecta.

Things like Buriza/Hellrack, Tormentor and Maximus/Sky-Splitter probably were even designed specificallly for followers. They obviously knew the stats weren't suited for Inferno.

They are just not MP 10 material, and that's ok in any game about progression. Some things will be more end-game~ish than others. People talk as if there are just one option per slot, when that clearly was never the case.

I fully agree with how there's should be more options and that these weapons can be a very cool customization feature. But I'm not gonna be a hypocrite and sugarcoat the fact that most other games also fail in this feature (D2, PoE, etc.).

I don't think you got OP's point.
They MADE all these 'toy legendaries', and now they say "people don't use 'toy legendaries' because they suck".
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Maybe you should've figured that out before you made them.

lol...The devs are either totally oblivious or great actors.

A friend of mine came up with a conspiracy theory about whats really going on.

Short version.. Basically the real D3 was split up and will be sold in expansion packs. Now the D3 teams real goal is to keep hope/interest alive in order to sell the console version and xpacs.

Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."

"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"

What they probably didn't know that in a game where it's supposed to be about having fun slaying monsters that so many people would care that much about efficiency in the first place.

yeah, how could blizzard know such a thing. I mean, it's not like they have another, older hack&slay where they got their data from, how the people were playing the game, right?

In my imagination the blizz devs were like:
"Hold up, hold up, hold up, wait a second! People don't want to wear shitty gear for the fun of wearing them? They want to progress through the game? HOW COULD WE KNOW???"

Srsly, the only way to progress through the game are items. There is NOTHING else in this game. A lot of different things were planned, but only items made it in the game. And they didn't know that people want to progress in an (A)RPG? What kind of bloody amateurs are they?

I was reading the developer interview round up and read this paragraph

"With respect to itemization improvements, the team understands that one of main problems with existing legendaries is that they're often relegated to "toy status" because, while the've got fun effects, they rarely offer comparable upgrades to efficiency-based stats like DPS and EHP. The goal is to make sure that future legendaries don't just look cool, but that they're also compelling to use and make your character feel powerful, both visually and mechanically"

Like, seriously? This is a f***ing revelation to these people? It makes me want to go and slap all the developers in the face. This is the most obvious thing in any game that has items. No one is going to enjoy some fun unique ability or quirk in an item if of course the item has bad DPS, this is a prerequisite to a legendary item. Its oxygen and water, cant live without it.

How are these developers seriously just figuring this out now? Complete amature stuff right here, as if they never made a game before. Its one of those things where I just have no words, I cant...

/endrant

I know it's hard but it's time to let go of the anger over the terrible state of itemization at launch. Blizz gets 1 more chance imo. This one is the big one, this is the one that counts. 1.09 must succeed.

Looking at many other of D3's more polished aspects, I'm willing to try to understand that, somehow in the mix, itemization wasn't focused on as much as it should have been.

In my opinion, the game is flawed but it is a good thing in a way, legendaries are way flawed but that also means there is ample room for improvement and change..

When I look at PoE for instance I see a great game with a lot of depth, but the game is still on beta and they are puking content like crazy, in my opinion that is the worst thing they could do for the game on the long term.. I believe when it comes the day when people get bored of the game, they will be forced to release content and the content wont be that good, too many ideas will begin to be hard to balance and the game will be hard to manage without screwing people's expectations and wishes.

When I look at diablo 3 I see a flawed game at best, but with so much room for improvement and potencial, that fact alone makes me come to this forums and log in the game a few times per day, legendaries are a part of that room of improvement I see in the game, I still didnt give up on diablo 3 and I am probably dreaming out loud but I believe this next patch will begin adressing those most important aspects of the game.

yeah, how could blizzard know such a thing. I mean, it's not like they have another, older hack&slay where they got their data from, how the people were playing the game, right?

I presume you're talking about D2. And no, people didn't care nearly as much about efficiency when farming in Diablo 2 as they do in D3.

Please point me to any old-school Diablo 2 guide where they focus so much on "exp/hour" or "legendaries/hour". Most builds had very very different farming efficiency ratios. An "enchantress" could probably farm at 1/100th of the ratio of a Glacial Orb Sorc, or a Bone Spear/Spirit-Mancer.

In my imagination the blizz devs were like:
"Hold up, hold up, hold up, wait a second! People don't want to wear shitty gear for the fun of wearing them? They want to progress through the game? HOW COULD WE KNOW???"

Srsly, the only way to progress through the game are items. There is NOTHING else in this game. A lot of different things were planned, but only items made it in the game. And they didn't know that people want to progress in an (A)RPG? What kind of bloody amateurs are they?

Who said anything about progression? The subject matter there was how the whole "legendaries are useless" is a flawed and logicless argument.

Maybe a Vigilance can't beat an EF+WKL combo in terms of high-end dps, but if it's a good roll (high base DPS + 190%~ CHD) and you have decent gear, it is useable (maybe even in MP10), which is already a huge improvement over D2 that people seem to conveniently forget (or maybe didn't even know in the first place).

Keep caring only about progression and the rewards in your gaming experience and you'll be left with a very sour taste in most games. I will keep enjoying the experience of actually playing the game.

I don't think you got OP's point.
They MADE all these 'toy legendaries', and now they say "people don't use 'toy legendaries' because they suck".
Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Maybe you should've figured that out before you made them.

lol...The devs are either totally oblivious or great actors.

A friend of mine came up with a conspiracy theory about whats really going on.

Short version.. Basically the real D3 was split up and will be sold in expansion packs. Now the D3 teams real goal is to keep hope/interest alive in order to sell the console version and xpacs.

That's not far fetched considering the removed the mystic and charms and other facets of the game that should have been implemented from the get go. Just look at how they reference the mystic now, I have a feeling the mystic will be in the expansion and not a patch.

yeah, how could blizzard know such a thing. I mean, it's not like they have another, older hack&slay where they got their data from, how the people were playing the game, right?

I presume you're talking about D2. And no, people didn't care nearly as much about efficiency when farming in Diablo 2 as they do in D3.

People need to spent some time familiarizing themselves with that fact. In D2, the best items were only obtainable via boss-runs, and the difficulty cap was much lower (even with mp8). This means that 'efficiency' was mostly about getting to the damn boss in the first place... essentially, how quickly could you traverse the relevant distance on the map. On top of that, there was a vast amount of headroom to let people play with item and skill loadouts without really affecting your ability to farm that much, because most of the time spend 'farming' was walking to a bossfight, and the rest of the time was spent facerolling it to death.

D3 gave us what we wanted... much greater variation in where we could expect to find the loot we wanted, and a much higher difficultly cap. The effect of those two changes (in conjunction with the *AH, and who wanted that is a completely different discussion) has altered player behavior in ways that Blizzard clearly didn't anticipate (and I think it's spurious to assert, with our 20/20 hindsight, that they should have seen it coming in all its gory detail).

I'd be amazed if the 'new legendaries' weren't already well under way when D3 shipped, and once the 'item problem' became clear, it was too late to back out, and too early to fudge a solution... so yeah, we got lumbered with cool procs and bad stats.

In the end, D3 isn't a subscription game. There's no cost for leaving, and none for coming back. The D3 team has a chance to redeem themselves, and clearly want to do so. If you still care about the game, the best you can do is give constructive feedback. If you don't... well... there's not exactly a shortage of good games out there. And CoD. That also exists.